Conference News

The conference programme is now final. You can start composing your personal journey through the meeting. Available in PDF here.

Preliminary programme of the conference is published – check it here and join us!

All six subplenaries are now announced, including “The Politics of Explanation” with Laura Forlano, Noortje Marres, Ismael Rafols and Joan Fujimura, and “STS Enters the Transnational Covidscape: The Political Ecologies and Inequalities of COVID-19” with Warwick Anderson, Anthony Hatch, Duygu Kaşdoğan, İzmir Katip Çelebi University, chaired by Joan Fujimura. Check the complete line-up.

We understand there are many questions about the virtual meeting. It really is all coming together! We plan to release the program on Friday, 24 July. The template timetable has been added to the “What to expect” page. 

For the most fun of all, check out the new Frequently Asked Questions. If this raises still more questions, let us hear them so we can try to add answers.

Timing matters! A seemingly straight forward assertion. Yes, for sure, timing matters! But how do we/should we understand the very notion of timing? Let’s discuss with Ulrike Felt (chair), Judy Wajcman, Carlo Caduff and Filip Vostal.

Presenter registration has closed. Non-presenter registration is now open. All are welcome to listen in on sessions, participate if and when invited by session chairs, peruse exhibits and visit with publishers, and join the informal networking sessions. 

We face a re-opening of academic institutions that seems guided by much uncertainty and anxiety. Experiences from the shut-down and the slow re-opening provide a window for critical engagement with academic institutions and practices. In this context we are excited to announce the third subplenary – concerned with making academy sustainable. With Knut H. Sørensen (chair), Maria do Mar Pereira, Sharon Traweek and Harro van Lente.

Dear participants, the virtual conference does not mean the end of sociality.

There will be two slots daily (80 and 60 minutes) dedicated to business meetings and thematic and freestyle chats. Submit your proposal for “a social” through All Academic. (https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ssss/ssss20)

And if you plan a city, regional or national f2f meeting with your colleagues and friends during the conference, let us know (meeting@easst4s2020prague.org). We will advertise it.

We are delighted to announce the second subplenary on Lessons from Big Data in the Covid-19 pandemic: Significance and Agency of STS in contemporary datafication with Alex Hanna, Stefania Milan and Christian Sandvig, chaired by Katja Mayer.

Dear members of the EASST community, dear colleagues and friends,

I hope this letter finds you well in these difficult and complex times. COVID-19 has actually transformed from a standard introductory sentence into one which points directly to the importance to care for each other.

I am writing this letter to give our membership a clearer idea of where developments are going in our community, in particular with regard to the – now virtual – EASST/4S conference in Prague. …read more

The registration for the conference is open.

As you may have questions about the fee rates, we would like to share a backstage story about the registration fee structure for the upcoming 4S-EASST Conference 2020. This conference was meant to take place in Prague but will now be fully virtual. This situation brings with it various costs, from those already incurred in Prague to software licenses. Unfortunately, this means this year’s meeting is far from cost free. We are aware of the international and intergenerational inequalities, and we will provide some fee waivers. 

You are now probably all acutely realizing how timing and locating matters and what it means to be taking decisions under conditions of multiple radical uncertainties. Here in Prague and in the EASST and 4S headquarters we certainly do. But still we all can act – reasonably and responsibly.

Under these conditions, we have decided finally to make our conference fully virtual. Given future scenarios of the current pandemic and related restrictions in global mobility, we concluded that it is not reasonable any longer to (techno)optimistically keep organizing the physical event in Prague. From the three options on the table – to cancel, postpone or go virtual, we decided on the third option. We will migrate the event to the virtual timespace and it will take place in the planned dates of August 18-21, 2020.

We are now intensely investigating the technical possibilities for the entirely virtual meeting and will keep you updated. Going virtual will definitely mean learning new things for all of us and a bit of extra work for the sessions chairs. However, we very much hope you all will stay with us on board this experiment of recreating the community online. We believe the new format, however forced upon us, can also become a petri dish for testing new, more eco- and climate-friendly ways of scholarly exchange. Having said that, please do not worry, there will surely be face-to-face academic sociality (perhaps mask-to-mask for some time) again!

Be well. Stay safe.

Tereza Stöckelová & Filip Vostal (from Prague)

Ulrike Felt (EASST)

Joan Fujimura (4S)

Due to the current Covid-19 emergency, the date of notification of acceptance/rejection of all abstracts will be postponed to April 30. In case you are a convener, the deadline for open panels is extended to April 8.

Thanks for your understanding. Please note we are also considering alternative modes of organizing the conference and will update you in due course – by the end of April at the latest. 

All of us are now surely closely following the socio-epidemiological developments of the coronavirus/COVID 19. Many professional meetings and academic conferences are now being cancelled. Given the fact that the Prague conference is still more than 5 months ahead of us, we luckily do not need to rush into any radical decisions now, under extreme uncertainty about future dynamics of the epidemic. We are continuing our preparations of the conference while keeping close eye on the development. We will do our best to have a safe, physical meeting with you in Prague in August. 

In this moments we would like to express our solidarity with colleagues in China, Italy and other parts of world hit by the COVID 19 crisis in the most severe way.

The submissions have been closed on Feb 29. Please don’t ask for exceptions, they will not be granted. Sorry!

There will be six subplenaries on the conference programme. We will announce them as they are finalized. Check out the first one.

Practices aimed at creating a less wasteful, less carbon-intense conference

6 Jan, 2020

Call for mentors and mentees to meet in Prague. The goal of the program is to exchange ideas with junior scholars and support their career development. Register your interest here.

17 Dec, 2019

The general call for EASST+4S 2020 is now open! We invite submissions of single papers, closed panels and Making and Doing interventions. The Program Committee accepted 217 Open Panel proposals, a good place to start for submitting a paper. Check out the complete Call for Submissions. Deadline is 29 Feb.

2 Nov, 2019

A record number of OP proposals has been submitted – 282. Thank you for your interest in STS and Prague. We start the review process now and will get back to you at the beginning of December. Please note that only the person who submitted the proposal can edit it at this stage. After the proposal is accepted, all panel organizers will be able to fully participate in managing it.

30 Sept, 2019

Check the Focus and Themes of the conference and submit your proposal for open panels. The proposal should include: title, abstract (up to 250 words) and convenors of the panel. The deadline for submission is 31 October 2019. Wide variety of STS topics is welcome. For details go to Call for Submissions.